Last month my sister tagged me in a picture of the novel cover, knowing that I’m a fan of Christian Simamora’s J boyfriend series. I’ve been strolling down every bookstore I see ever since, trying to find the book and finally found it last week. Finished reading it in 4 shots – needed to stop myself from reading due to having to work the next day.

Unlike his other J boyfriend series novels, the cover of this novel is not a guy’s bare chest with six-pack abs. It’s still in line with the theme, though, showing a guy’s body with cropped head. This time the guy’s wearing a tux. 🙂

Javier Bungsu Vimana (Javi) has been best friends with Kendra Rey ever since they were kids. Javi is a player specialized in one night stands with pretty girls he meets through dating apps. Being a Vimana (a wealthy clan in this series), he owns (only) a small Russian-themed cafe in a mall, Tolstoy, with Kendra as the operational manager. Just as the saying: “men and women can’t be just friends“, Kendra has had a crush on Javi for a long time, of course without Javi knowing. One weekend, to celebrate her best friend’s engagement, Kendra and Javi had a sleepover at Laura‘s villa in Puncak. Laura’s fiance, Mario, asked Javi during their ‘truth or dare’ game if he would have sex with Kendra. In an instant Javi answered no, because Kendra is undesirable – and this answer broke Kendra’s heart.

Things changed between them – the heartbroken Kendra avoided Javi with all she could and changed her looks before she finally recovered. In an event sponsored by Shylock community in Bandung, Kendra met Orion Sentosa, another rich guy of the story who fell in love with her and finally caught her attention. Long story short, they started dating and this fact finally opened Javi’s mind that he’s jealous of Ken dating another man…

my (and apparently someone else’s) favorite quote from the book

You should read the rest of the story yourself – that’s why I’m not continuing my story. In his thirteenth novel, Christian Simamora is getting more mature in his writing, making it even harder (than ever) for me to stop flipping from page to page. The story is typical problem everyone meets when being best friends with a member of opposite sex: you might silently have a crush on your best friend while at the same time you’re not comfortable with the thought of approaching him/her because you don’t want to lose him/her as a best friend, but with additional seasoning of drama which will drag you to some emotional states throughout the story.

I read the novel for the first time back in 2002 during my first year of high school (the book was launched in 2001). I remember liking the novel but had a hard time reading it because of the incomprehensible concept of the story. Long story short, they made a movie out of this novel and by chance I won free tickets, so it’s so me to buy the novel to read it once more before watching the movie.

It was told that a couple of 10 years, Reuben and Dimas, thought of creating something different, and they came up with the idea of writing a novel. Reuben the genius, combined with Dimas the romantic, wrote together a novel inspired by a rare sad ending fairy tale about a knight, a princess, and a shooting star (ksatria, putri dan bintang jatuh).

The knight is someone who fell in love so deep with the pretty princess that he took the only chance the shooting star gave him to take him to the princess’s place beyond the sky. When they arrived, the shooting star was also charmed by the princess that in a moment he left the knight alone in the dark and came to the princess himself.

In parallel universe, there was a young executive, Ferre (the knight), who fell in love with a magazine reporter he met by chance, Rana (the princess). Rana was married to Arwin, so it makes things complicated for the two people deeply in love. Then there came Supernova, the Cyber Avatar of the story, who gave people advices, including our Ferre and Rana. After struggling with things, Rana finally decided to come back to her husband, leaving Ferre deeply heartbroken that he didn’t leave his house for 3 full days, making his across the street neighbor, Diva (the shooting star), worried. Diva was a dangerously pretty and smart, independent woman who is not willing to work in any institution – she made her money by giving people ‘services’ and only the services they are paying for. Diva helped Ferre a lot in transforming to be a real knight, and after she’s done, she left.

Overall, I’m giving 4 out of 5 stars for this novel. Even after reading it for the second time, I’m still amazed by how Dee is telling the story. It’s mysterious in a way and genius in other, giving us a different perspective on how to see the world. It’s hard not to flip to the next page as you finish reading one.

I received a very interesting email in August 2014, saying that if you order printed books you will get 50% discount for a limited time (you can check it here, books in bahasa Indonesia). I headed to the URL right away only to browse for books under the category “Fiction and Literature” and to be more specific, “Metropop”. (I ended up ordering 4 novels with total price of only 103kIDR including shipping fee.) I’ve finished reading 2 so far, and “A Week to Forever” is my choice to review since surprisingly, the first edition was just launched in August 2014, so it’s quite new.

6 years ago, Amaya and Dirga met in Singapore for the first time. Amaya was a Master’s student and Dirga was a secondary student – Amaya is 5 years older than Dirga. Both felt that there’s something different between them, but were too shy to ask and tell the other. Dirga, the wise, smart, mature 17 year-old boy with his commitment to God and Amaya, the smart and independent 22 year-old girl who loves God more than anything in the world. After one year, they separated just like that, to their own ways.

With their full faith to their God, they’d believed that when they see each other again today, it’s not a coincidence, but it’s God’s will. Having only 1 week to catch up, they didn’t waste their precious time. Both still had that feeling from the past and were very upset with the fact that they see each other again under the condition that Amaya was engaged and getting married in 3 months. Again, they had to go their separate ways. The day finally came when Amaya’s getting married and suprisingly, one incident united them. They were destined to be together, indeed.

Overall, I’m giving 4 out of 5 stars for this novel, though you who aren’t Christian might not like the too-Christian-y way of the writing. What I like about this novel is the way both characters fully put their lives and hearts in the hand of God, fully believe that God’s will is the best and most beautiful for their lives.

So I went to the bookstore 2 weeks ago to search for gift idea for my best friend who’s studying abroad and the first thing that came to my eyes was this book instead. I’ve been looking for the novel for the past year and never found it. Apparently they reprint it to match Christian Simamora’s J-boyfriend series’ style: muscly guys’ abs on the cover. *intermezzo: work has been so crazy that even though I finished reading this novel last week, I just have the chance to review it here today*

Teresia is a successful young lady working as a chief fashion stylist for Mascara (yes, the very same Mascara as the one read by Devika in Guilty Pleasure), together with her best friend Lisa and the two-in-one Sesa and Rian (and yes, this is the same Rian as the one in Guilty Pleasure as well). Ever since she first met Jethro Liem, a photographer for the magazine, they never missed an argument. In short, Tere felt a deep hatred over Jet that Lisa told her to control herself because deep hatred will most likely lead to deepest love. One day, Jet found out the dark side of Tere’s love life: she was the third wheel of her boyfriend’s engagement, just like him and his girlfriend. Being stuck in an elevator together for an hour one night, they shared stories from heart to heart, without any argument this time. Apparently, they were good as friends too when no argument takes place. A surprising move from Jet that night finally changed Tere’s heart – they fell in love and were pretty good at it. The storm passed by when each of their lovers found out they were together, but as other romance novel, they ended up happily ever after. 🙂 Overall, I’m giving 4 out of 5 stars for this novel. This novel from 2012 is the kind of Christian Simamora’s one that I can’t stop reading page after page. Please please please keep up the good work, mate! 😀 ❤

I’d practically spent my last 3 nights reading this novel in my room (only to get 3 sleepy mornings after, but it’s all worth it). I always like this author since he uses appropriate amount of slang words together with a nice mix of simple English and bahasa Indonesia (unlike those new authors using too much English when the novels are supposed to be in bahasa Indonesia). In addition to that, he seems to have always planned the plot before started writing; it makes his novels consistently interesting from the start till the end, really.

The tagline of the novel’s cover was “Terkadang, yang tak bisa kamu lupakan adalah seseorang yang tak pernah bisa kamu miliki” (translates to: “Sometimes, the one you cannot forget is the one you can never have”), making people curious about what’s inside the novel (well, at least I was).

The story is about a woman in her early 30, who works as a quite successful scriptwriter in Indonesia, Sarah. The first part of the novel was about her breaking up with her 2-year boyfriend (who’d been living with her, in HER apartment, without paying anything). With the help from her best friend, Anye, she went to Bali to better heal her broken heart and to finish writing her newest script. Unexpectedly, Anye’s little brother, Jandro, was already there by the time Sarah arrived. He was there to also try healing his broken heart after breaking up with his girlfriend. With Jandro being her best friend’s brother, not to mention much younger than she was, Sarah had to make her boundaries; she cannot fall in love with him…

As any other romance novel, this one has a happy ending – the author himself had even written that fact on the back cover. The conflicts are the most interesting to follow as you flip from page to page. 🙂

The downside is, this novel is in bahasa Indonesia and I’m not sure if it’s going to be translated to English. If you read bahasa Indonesia, I highly recommend this novel to you. The conflict about not dating a younger guy can relate more to Indonesian too anyway. 😉